


Blue Canary

by DetectiveRoboRyan



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Alternate Universe- 1930s, Bed and Breakfast if You Know What I Mean, Continues after the sex part, Crossover, F/F, Jazz Clubs, Jazz Singer Azura, Morning After, Sexually Implicit, Soldier Lucina, Strangers to Lovers, Twin Corrins, Who's ya daddy shigure, one-night stand, this is gay, vintage lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-08 08:30:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8837641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetectiveRoboRyan/pseuds/DetectiveRoboRyan
Summary: Lucina Grace, an army sergeant on her way to Nohr to visit friends, ends up on the Hoshido side of the continent by accident and wanders into a jazz club. Since it's late and the place is closing, she gets a chance to chat with the mysterious and lovely club vocalist, known only as Azura, unaware of what the rest of the night holds. Seven years later after what both had decided was merely a one-night stand, they reunite and the flame ignites once more-- though neither can tell at first if it's something deeper this time.





	

**Author's Note:**

> there are only like two paragraphs of actual sex here
> 
> the playlist: https://playmoss.com/en/detectiverobomonkey/playlist/little-blue-mockingbird

The air of the jazz club is smoky, but it doesn't bother Azura anymore. It made her cough once, when she was young and accustomed to the clear air of Valla's mountains and forests where tobacco won't grow, but she's gotten used to it— just like she's gotten used to the ever-present sound of drums and piano and tenor sax running through her head. She's always loved music, but she could do without the smoke.  
  
But it's the thirties, and everybody smokes, so she's stuck. Azura doesn't think she will— no point, if it's everywhere she is. Always a haze over her eyes, the smell of burning tobacco in her nose, nicotine in her lungs so at this point buying smoke for herself would just be a waste of her salary. She'll make do. She always has.  
  
It's good to notice the people who enter the club— Samurai Sunrise is an uptown joint, near to Hoshido's capitol building as it is, but they've gotten unsavory characters before. Usually the bouncers can catch them. Agents of the Krakeners, most likely. They're on the border, so that happens more often than Azura would like. She'll glance at them with eyes that perhaps seem passive, but the bartender can read her gaze by now and he'll call the grunts over. It's a living, barely.  
  
There's a joe that walks in as Azura's break ends and she strides up to the stage again. It's right before close at eleven-thirty so there's barely anybody in the house— the band is tired and Azura feels tired, but at this point it's just the daily grind. She sways the mic stand to the interlude in the music and watches him come in, sit down at the bar, leaning in close to the bartender like he doesn't want to talk over the music. He's a soldier in green, the sleeves of his jacket pushed up, dark hair cropped close to his skull in the standard military buzz. Her keen ears can pick up the jingling of his dog tags— more than two, certainly. He's taller than most she sees, and dark. There are mirrored sunglasses tucked in the pocket of his jacket. He's tall, dark and handsome in Ylisse's emerald-green fatigues, and Azura is intrigued. But it's her turn to sing, so she sings.  
  
The joe at the counter nods a greeting when the bartender notices him. He orders his drink— _just a beer, please, what brand is good? I'll have that_ — and then he watches Azura from the bar. You don't see performers like that in his city, or if you do, he hasn't seen them.  
  
"Who's the canary?" he asks. Azura can hear him. He has a soft, almost feminine voice— it's feminine enough that Azura questions her initial impression of him. The bartender tells him that's Azura, finest songstress this side of the border. You're lucky you got in so short before closing. It's her last song of the night. So the soldier at the bar shuts up and listens, and Azura sings.  
  
It's enchanting— but, the soldier thinks, everybody must think that. He's been told that this place is famous for its music. More so, it's famous for her, Azura, the Shirasagi's famous songstress. He asks if it's true she's charmed an army. The bartender doesn't know for certain. Much of Azura is shrouded in mystery, likely by design. The Shirasagis, as she was their most valuable money-making asset, kept most information about her under lock and key. Where would they be if the secret to their success got into the hands of the Krakeners?  
  
Maybe it was how late it was, then, that was making his eyes trace her shape, his fingers envision running themselves through that mass of pale-blue hair that flowed like water. Perhaps the lingering glances at those swaying hips were not quite necessary and not what he'd do if the sun were out. But how would it be, he wonders. He's sure it must only be physical. But things needn't be more than physical to be real.  
  
"Pack it up, boys, that's a night," she says when the number is done, spoken voice just as soft and lilting as it is when she sings. The band starts to put their instruments away, and the soldier turns back to his half-empty beer. He supposes he'll have to get going soon— he needs to find a way to the other side of the river, and he'd prefer to do it before sunrise.  
  
Azura steps off the stage and slides herself onto a stool next to him. "Hey, soldier," she says, resting an elbow on the bar. "You're not from around here."  
  
The soldier chuckles. "Is it that obvious?"  
  
"I've seen half the capitol city in this club," Azura says, taking a swig from the glass of ice water the bartender slides her. "And I've never seen you before. Nor have I seen many stare so intently at my hips." The ice cubes in her glass shift and clink when she swirls it.   
  
His cheeks color, deep brown crossed with battle scars, dark circles beneath pale blue eyes. "Sorry," he says. "Must be the hour. I'm not usually up this late."  
  
Azura shrugs. "For what it's worth, I'm glad you like what you see. Say, what's your name?"  
  
"Sergeant Grace," the soldier says. And now that Azura's closer, she can tell he only looks decidedly male from a distance— up close, his features are softer than most men, making him look more like a teenage boy than a man. But he has to be at least twenty-one to get into the club. He must've shown an ID, and with that in mind, he's clearly older than a teenager. So Azura's assumption is he must be a woman, not a man. Quite the handsome woman, Azura admits. And she'll admit she likes that.  
  
"So you're a woman, then?" Azura asks. Safer to ask, really.  
  
"Most days," Sergeant Grace admits.   
  
"Like today?" Azura asks.  
  
Grace shrugs and takes a swig from her beer. "Sure."  
  
Azura leaves it at that. "So what are you in town for?"  
  
"Who's asking?" Grace replies, raising an eyebrow.  
  
"I think you already know all you need to know about me," Azura tells her. "You can call me Azura, if you're looking for a name."  
  
The sergeant raises an eyebrow. "That can't be your real name."  
  
Azura shrugs. Her bare shoulders are creamy brown in the dim, smoky light. Sergeant Grace can almost see veins through the thin skin of Azura's small, slender hands. In comparison, her own are big and bulky, long-fingered and calloused at the tips and palms. Azura is sure if she turned those hands over in her own she'd see evidence of battle— she must be a part of Ylisse's infantry division. It takes work to hold a blade on the battlefield.  
  
"Maybe it's not," she says.  
  
Sergeant Grace takes a sip of her beer. She swirls the remnants in the mug, then finishes it off. The bartender takes it and cleans it out, then sets it back under the counter.  
  
"Aces," she says. "Say, nobody will tell me— do you know how to get to Windmire?"  
  
The club, which had been quiet before, now hushes completely. The bartender looks over to stare, an eyebrow raised, and the entire place's silence asks _why do you wanna know, stranger?_  
  
Azura sends a glance over the club that says she'll handle it. Confused, Grace looks from the silent jazz club all sending eyes her way in suspicion to Azura, calm as ever. She's beginning to suspect that the tension her friends mentioned is a much bigger deal inside Hoshido and Nohr than it is outside.  
  
"Why do you need to get to the other side of the canyon, soldier?" Azura asks, leaning closer— her shoulders rise, one elbow resting on the bar. She tilts her head just so those of lesser wills would melt or at least soften in her hands— she'd never tried it on a woman before, but in the end everyone was just another person that melted with the temptation of pretty hands, soft lips, and a few batted eyelashes.  
  
"I've, um, got friends over there," Grace says. "I—"  
  
Azura sets a finger on her lips. "Let's not bring borders into this," she murmurs, leaning closer. "That kind of talk really puts a dampener on the mood, now, doesn't it?" She sets a hand on the sergeant's jaw, fingers brushing her buzzed hair. Azura won't pretend to be some kind of expert at the art of seduction, but she can recognize when it's the right tool for the job. If she can just get her upstairs, then she can drop the act and tell the truth. And really, wouldn't that be nice?  
  
"Wasn't aware there was a mood," Sergeant Grace whispers, voice husky, and Azura won't lie that it thrills her.  
  
"Does there have to be?" Azura whispers back. Grace would say yes but their lips meet, and then there's no time for words. It's a kiss that is physically deep but emotionally shallow; it's as if Sergeant Grace knows this will ultimately mean nothing but he succumbs to the physicality of it anyway; things do not have to be emotionally complex to be real and significant, and this Azura has memorized. She has never said she is a proud woman but it is easy, perhaps too easy, to begin entrancing people with her voice and then finish it with her movements. She has to wonder what her mother would say if she could see Azura now— what would she think of her daughter being a siren, a seductress that lures men into a night of meaninglessness and then vanishes before they wake, leaving them wondering if it was all a dream? Azura does not like to think about that. The kiss breaks when Azura hears the band leaving through the door with their instruments.  
  
She stands, her movements as smooth and graceful as they were onstage. She nods to the bartender, closing up his cabinets, and he gives a nearly-imperceptible nod back.  
  
"The club is closed," she murmurs, setting her arms on Sergeant Grace's shoulders. "Got anywhere to stay tonight, soldier?"  
  
"I thought I'd be at my friends' place by now," Grace admits. "So, I don't."  
  
"Come on upstairs," Azura purrs. The sergeant nods and Azura takes her arm, leading her through the little door to the stairwell. The squeaky hinges swing shut and it's just them in the cold air of the stairwell, cramped in the little space below the first stair. Sergeant Grace's breath is hot on Azura's neck. She's a foot taller and a bit wider than Azura, and for a moment Sergeant Grace moves in to kiss when Azura moves in a flash and her forearm is pinning the Sergeant's neck to the wall, her other hand holding a glistening Hoshido-made switchblade.  
  
"Tell me the truth," Azura says, voice no less level than it was when she was singing or when she was flirting her way into the position they're in now. "What do you have to do with Nohr? What's your business here?"  
  
"Is this an interrogation?" the sergeant demands.  
  
 "Tell me the truth," Azura repeats, the tip of the blade getting closer to the sergeant's neck. "Tell me or I hand you over to the Shirasagis."  
  
Azura is deadly serious and the sergeant can tell. "Alright, it seems we're doing this your way," Grace decides. She licks her lips and swallows as best she can with the blade fractions of an inch from her skin. "I don't have any business with the Shirasagis, or the Krakeners. I've got friends who work under them, and I'm on this continent to visit them."  
  
She can tell when people are lying and Grace isn't lying. "Asking about how to get to Nohr is dangerous this side of the border, soldier."  
  
"And why is that, if I may ask?" Grace asks. She really doesn't know. Azura hesitates, but the Sergeant is an outsider— foreign military, perhaps, but Ylisse has expressed before that they have no interest in getting between two countries that seem intent on destroying each other when distance still makes it difficult to arrange diplomatic meetings. Nobody can speak for Plegia, but Plegia has always been slippery in its machinations, and either way they seem too busy antagonizing Ylisse to bother antagonizing anybody else. It is an elaborate game these ruling families play, and had Azura the choice, she'd let them all kill each other.  
  
"Because one day that closed border is going to break," Azura tells her. "And all of us little people, all of us pawns to the Krakeners and the Shirasagis, we're going to be the first line of defense."  
  
She can tell that doesn't sit well with the sergeant.  
  
"If you hate it so much, why don't you just leave the country?" she asks.  
  
And Azura cannot answer that. She closes her switchblade and puts it back in the pocket hidden in the waistline of her dress. She wears white on stage, long blue hair loose and flowing and a strand draped over her face just so. It's sexy, it's mysterious, the stylist had told her at first, the one that works for the younger Mr. Shirasagi. He hates being called that, but Azura doesn't remember his first name, and anyway, he hasn't bothered ever addressing her by her name, so why should she bother with his?  
  
"You said your name was Grace," she says. "Any relation to Emmeryn Grace?"  
  
It's an easy, passive question. Azura is good at those. Grace shrugs. "She's my aunt." So not only has Azura managed to net herself an army sergeant who doesn't know what to say and what not to say in Hoshido, she's managed to net herself a relative of the Exalt of Ylisse. _Great_. Her mother would be so proud. Perhaps her daughter is a political hostage and a whore, but at least she's good enough at what she does that she's managed to seduce a princess.  
  
It's not as close a relation as Azura was expecting. "You're in the military?"  
  
"I was in the Shepherds infantry division A3," the Sergeant explains. "Joined up in 1922. My friends in Nohr were, too. I haven't seen them since 1926. Now that the war in Ylisse is over and reparations are coming along, I've taken some time off the military to see them."  
  
Azura nods. That's all the response she gives. They stand in silence in the stairwell. Azura knows the racing of her heart and rushing of her blood is only a physical reaction to the touch they've shared, but she wants more. She really should send the sergeant away to a boardinghouse for the night, but she wants to take fistfuls of her shirt and press their mouths together, hard and bruising and angry. She really should go back upstairs and wash off her makeup and let her hair down and try to return to what little her life is outside of singing, but she wants to drag Sergeant Grace upstairs and feel her strong battle-worn hands on her waist and in her hair, tug at that fatigue jacket until the buttons pop and get lost between the floorboards. She should resist, but she wants.  
  
Her mouth suddenly feels dry. "What's your name, Sergeant Grace?" she asks.  
  
"Lucina. What's yours?" the sergeant replies, shifting her weight to one foot. Her heavy boots make her yet another inch taller than Azura, on top of the six she already has. If Azura weren't in her heels she'd be much shorter. She dances in heels with straps so thin one could swear she's barefoot, toes glancing off the polished floor as if she's floating— an ethereal spirit of the water or the wind entrancing those who watches with her song and her dance. A siren, luring mortals in with desire.  
  
"Azura," Azura tells her. "It's my real name. Most call me the Songstress."  
  
"You have a very lovely voice," Sergeant Grace comments, her voice dropping in pitch to something that makes something in Azura's core hum. "I can see why."  
  
Leave her and go upstairs, something in Azura's mind demands. But she doesn't. She steps forwards and touches the sergeant's chest, fingers glancing ever-so-slightly off the faded brass buttons of her fatigue jacket. Lesser men have melted in Azura's hands at that move, but Sergeant Grace has, somewhere, learned how to respond to such.  
  
"You'd like to hear me sing, wouldn't you?" Azura murmured, and her heartbeat pounds in her ears. She stands on her tiptoes, nearly leaning against the Sergeant's chest, when she whispers it in the Sergeant's ear. She can feel the restraint when she runs her hand up to the collar of the jacket, and cups the back of Grace's head with her other hand, buzzed strands tickling her slender fingers.  
  
Grace's hands come to rest on Azura's waist. Her hands are long and slender, artists' hands, though hers are calloused from using weapons of destruction and not creation as it seems they were meant to do. Her hands rest below the skin-fabric threshold made by Azura's dress, its back dropped low to her waistline, and with a shiver Azura feels calloused fingertips brush across her spine.  
  
"I'd love to hear you sing," Grace whispers in her ear, and somehow those six words are more charged with energy and passion than anything Azura has done for all twenty-six years of her life.  
  
Their lips crash together. Azura's back is to the exposed brick wall of the stairwell when she was certain it had been Grace she was pinning to the wall, but there is a mass keeping her there and is Grace. They break apart when Azura's knees, tired of keeping her up, buckle. Grace lifts her to the wall, a knee between her legs, and Azura's arms go around her neck. It is an embrace of fitful physical passion rather than an embrace of love but it makes Azura's empty skin scream from the sensation, tingling, burning like Sergeant Grace is fire and her skin is coated in oil. Her core burns, likewise, even though she knows she's done this before and it's just another night— who cares if they talked before rushing upstairs? She's going to be gone in the morning anyway, and it'll be just another night of something physical, something real to keep her grounded in reality, something that she tries to use to remind herself she has agency, she has control.  
  
Azura may be against the wall but she will not let the Sergeant forget who's really in control. She sucks in breath when their lips part and dives right back in, teeth coming down hard on the sergeant's lower lip. Grace's hands clutch her waist tighter, reacting to the pain but she does not cry out, only pulls Azura closer, lifts her off the ground so they can kiss again. Grace takes advantage of when Azura pulls away for breath to push her mouth against Azura's neck. She licks first, teeth scraping the skin just below her jawbone, and then her teeth sink into her skin, soft and unmarked and light brown. She's lighter than Grace and she's pretty sure Grace is too dark to be Ylissean— but then, Grace probably thinks that Azura is too dark to be Hoshidan. Azura would not be fooling anybody if she tried to say she were born on this continent, so she's never tried.  
  
"Ah—" Azura whimpers, that she hates herself for as soon as it's out. She bites her kiss-swelling lip to cut herself off. The back of her head hits the brick wall. Sergeant Grace's breath is at once hot and cold on her skin; hot immediately where the air rushes over it but then cold with the absence of it when it fades and it's merely condensation. Azura is acutely aware of where Grace is and is not and it tears her between pressing herself closer to feel the warmth of another or pulling away and letting herself be cool. She is not sure which one she wants to do but she's tempted to push closer, to drag this foreign soldier she met ten minutes ago upstairs and into her bed that is realistically too narrow for two people. It'd be easy (it was always easy) and Azura would be gone in the morning. She was always gone in the morning.  
  
"Does it hurt?" Grace asks.  
  
"No," Azura says. She always does.  
  
They kiss again. It steals her breath and it's inelegant, bruising, makes her taste the beer on Grace's lips and tongue and she has never been a fan of beer, really (she prefers cocktails) but like the drug it is it's intoxicating mingled with the taste of the Sergeant's lips. They taste like ashes and coffee grounds and powdered saccharine that people trying to lose weight put in their tea, and there's not much of a difference in Azura's mind between ashes and coffee grounds, but she can taste the difference. For instance, she'd rather drink ashes mixed in with hot water than coffee. Something in her burns and she knows it's not the desire to go to sleep. (It's just physical, the logical part of her tells herself, though it is doing nothing to stop it. Just an urge, like hunger. Take care of it and you can forget about this one like you've forgotten all the others. But some emotional part of her will remember her name, Lucina, because this is the first given name she's gotten out of all the people she's had.)  
  
"Upstairs," Azura says, voice hoarse. Sergeant Grace nods.  
  
Azura takes her elbow and leads her up the weather-battered staircase, unlocks the door to her apartment with the key under the dead potted plant on the windowsill next to the stairs, and kicks off her heels. She gives the Sergeant a second to stumble out of those heavy, military-issue combat boots and then tugs her over to the bed, pushed into one corner of the one-room apartment. She doesn't bother turning the lights on.  
  
She doesn't have a couch so there's no mistaking it when she pushes Grace to the bed, but Grace takes her wrists and pulls her in for another kiss as they sink down, down, onto the low mattress full of lumpy springs that poke into Azura's back when she lies down. But Azura doesn't care about that now. She's on top of a handsome foreign military sergeant and the physical part of her wants this, wants this more than a fire wants more wood to burn, wants this more than a scholar wants to learn more. She wants more to feed the fire, feed her hunger— she hungers for touch with a ferocity she never thinks about until it's time for her to feed, and it's a hunger that could drive her mad.  
  
Azura is impatient. Her fists are clenched in Grace's buttoned-up collar and she tugs at it, tugs at the buttons until she can make her fingers calm down and undo them, one by one, and then she tugs at the t-shirt underneath like she can't wait to get that off, too. There's no bra underneath but there are barely any breasts underneath, so Azura understands that part. Grace shrugs off her fatigue jacket and tosses it on the floor. The tiny brass buttons click against the worn floorboards.  
  
Grace works her hands around to Azura's back to find the tiny little zipper keeping her dress in place. She tugs it down as far as it'll go and Azura hunches her shoulders forwards to make the straps fall off, and the top half of it falls down off her chest, off her stomach. She steps out of it and hangs it on a hanger, smooths the wrinkles out of her skirt, and hangs the coat hanger on the nail in the post next to her bed.  
  
"You're very beautiful," Grace tells her as she gets back onto the bed in her slip, the soft-woven fabric bunching up and shifting when she does, and she says it like it's just a fact and not a compliment. Perhaps it's both. Azura doesn't know how to respond to it if it's both.  
  
"I suppose," Azura replies.  
  
"That's not the response I usually get," Grace admits, leaning in again for another kiss. Get on with it, Azura wants to shout. "But I suppose in your line of work, you've gotten used to people calling you beautiful."  
  
"Do you often call girls beautiful, Sergeant?" Azura asks, with a hint of teasing, when the kiss breaks.  
 "Depends," Grace replies. "Do you often sleep with strangers? Are you a prostitute— should I be paying you for this? Should I tip?"  
  
Azura has had that thought herself, but hearing it from somebody else irks her. She takes Grace's shoulders and pushes her back down onto the bed, then positions herself on top. "This isn't a service," she says. "This isn't for _you_. It's for me, and what _you_ get in return is a nice night with a beautiful woman you'll never see again."  
  
She pushes their lips together, harder, sucking at her lips and her tongue, tilting her head to deepen the kiss, feeling her lips hurt and wondering if it's possible to bruise lips from kissing. It probably isn't, but they'll swell and bleed if Grace bites back— and Azura almost makes a surprised noise of pain when she does. She bites, she sucks, she scrapes with her teeth, she makes it certain that Azura's lip will be swollen and thick when she lets go. For a moment Azura lets herself be caught up in the rushing of blood in her head and when she clenches her hands again in the shoulders of Grace's t-shirt she's on her back, biting her lip, and Grace's sucking at her neck and her shoulder again. She's pushed aside a strap of her slip and has a hand on her thigh. Sergeant Grace is between her legs and she's breathing, panting, and if it were cold her breath would be steaming. But it's autumn and the nights in Hoshido do not get that cold.  
  
It is, at least, nice to see that she's not going to have to do all the work. So she lets go.  
  
Moments blur together. The Sergeant's hand on her thigh, moving _inwards_ , pushing her skirt _up_ and coming to rest at the crux between her legs; she licks her fingers and toys with the entrance before pushing one in; Azura moans, more sound than she usually makes when she does this; her breath grows _heavy_ , ragged, Grace's lips are on hers again and she wraps her arms around Grace's neck, hands spread over her buzzed scalp; Grace has left dark purple bruises on her neck and her jaw and her shoulder, her lips are kiss-swollen and her skin is coated in a thin veneer of sweat; she sees stars when Grace pitches her fingers up _just_ the right way and _oh sky above_ release is sweet. Her head spins when the stars clear and Grace pulls her fingers from Azura's center. Azura pulls her into another kiss.  
  
But with the stars cleared it's the Sergeant's turn. Azura stops pulling at her t-shirt and arches her back up, her hand trailing down to the waistband of Grace's pants. She pushes them inside and feels Grace shudder, knees shaking. She brings Grace to peak with her shaky hands, hearing the Sergeant's moans with her lips making reddish marks in her flushed, brown skin. When she rides it out she's collapsed on top of Azura, breath hot on Azura's neck. She runs a hand through Azura's long, messy hair and says, "You must have some experience with people like me, too."  
  
"That doesn't matter," Azura tells her, pushing her heavy weight off. Grace sits, rolls her shoulders, blinks in the darkness. Azura's eyes are glinting yellow in the moonlight falling through the dirty windowpane. The lights of Shirasagi and its distant historical castle on the hilltop glow in the darkness. It must be around midnight.  
  
She stands, hair slipping from between the Sergeant's fingers. Grace doesn't bother grasping at it, knowing she's leaving. "It's late," she says. "I'll let you sleep here for the night. You'll forget me in the morning."  
  
"I never forget," Grace says.  
  
 "You _always_ do," Azura says, and she's not speaking to Grace but perhaps to the collective; all the bodies she's seduced and left in the morning. The first time was because she was lonely and wanted to be held and didn't know how to get that without sex involved but after that she didn't know why— perhaps because it was easy, so easy, once she figured out how to swing her hips and pitch her voice and toss her head and trail her fingers, to get somebody to melt in her hands and it became a game of control. Is this the last bit of agency she has in her situation? Is being a whore some kind of rebellion against the powers that put her where she is?  
  
Grace does not reply to that. She watches Azura run a comb through her long hair and fold it into a braid, looking into the cracked mirror hanging on the wall. Her bare feet are silent on the worn wooden floor. Grace wasn't sure what color her slip was at first because it's dark, but in the slice of light coming through the windows it seems to be yellow. It matches her eyes. But there is no use arguing with Azura, so she tugs the quilt over herself and sleeps, back against the wall.  
  
Azura falls asleep at her kitchen table but in the morning she wakes in her bed, the covers pulled up to her chin, her phone ringing and the smell of coffee wafting through the air. The dinky electric stove is on— she can tell because she hears something sizzling on the puny flame— but she doesn't have time to worry about it. She stands and pads over to the phone without thinking about why her stove is on and who is cooking and who made coffee and who put her in her bed, and picks up. Probably Mr. Shirasagi, she guesses.  
  
She's correct. Before she can even say hello, he says " _Azura? Azura, I have some concerns."_  
  
"Do you now, sir," she says dryly. He doesn't catch the sarcasm.  
  
 _"I heard a rumor that you had relations with foreign military personnel last night?"_ Mr. Shirasagi asks (boy, word gets around quick), and he sounds like he's trying to be a hard-hitting reporter asking the hard-hitting questions but he really just sounds like a businessman calling from the private line in his ivory tower, from his office all made of polished wood and shag carpet and dark red fabric wallpaper. _"Azura, we're both adults. I don't care if you have anybody in your room, but if you've spilled any Hoshidan national secrets to a Nohrian—"_  
  
"She's not a Nohrian," Azura says. "She's a Ylissean sergeant, infantry division A3 of the Shepherds. Lucina Grace. Niece to the Exalt. Have your bookeepers look her up if you don't believe me."  
  
There's the rustling of papers. _"I'll have Saizo send down to the office for the background check,"_ Mr. Shirasagi says. _"Saizo, could you— there he goes. Alright, Azura, I trust you—"_  
  
_No you don't,_ Azura wants to say, and doesn't—  
  
_"— So I'll believe you in that you haven't said anything accidentally too important to a foreigner,"_ Mr. Shirasagi finishes. _"Anyway, with that taken care of, mother wants to see you."_  
  
"I'll let the guys know," Azura says. "And I'll… get the sergeant out of my apartment."  
  
_"She's in your apartment?"_ Mr. Shirasagi demands. _"What's she still doing there?"_  
  
Azura hears Grace pad up behind her, in her t-shirt and uniform pants, dog tags dangling around her neck. There are three of them instead of two. She holds up a pot of coffee and points to it, asking if Azura wants any. Azura, bemused, nods.  
  
"Making scrambled eggs," Azura replies. "Goodbye, sir. I'll be up at the castle as soon as I can." She hangs up despite his protests, setting the heavy black reciever on the bed with a clunk. She looks back at Sergeant Grace, humming some song as she distributes the eggs and toast onto two plates like it's the most natural thing in the world. Grace smiles and waves, like they're lovers and it's her turn to make breakfast.  
  
 "Say, where are the forks?" she asks.  
  
"The drawer left of the sink," Azura replies. "You need to leave."  
  
Grace frowns. "But I've just made breakfast," she says. "The eggs are all cheesy. It might need a bit of salt because I couldn't find any."  
  
Azura rubs her temples and pulls her day blouse and skirt from the trunk at the foot of her bed. She sits on the end of it and starts pulling on her stockings, not caring one bit that Grace is watching because Grace was just up close and personal with her _bits_ and she's in a hurry anyway. Mrs. Shirasagi is a kind woman and she treats Azura as she would her own children, which is fine, but Azura is under no illusions that she's family. If spending her childhood in Nohr and subsequent adolescence in Hoshido has taught her anything, it's that she's not going to get anything in life unless she takes it into her own hands. They can monitor her work, control where she's staying and how she makes money for herself, but the one thing they can't control is her sex life. It's a hollow victory, but in a sad way, it's the only thing she has.  
  
"I can't believe you made breakfast," she mutters, shoveling a few bites of cheesy eggs in her mouth and taking a sip of the dark coffee. The eggs are tasty if a little overdone, and Azura wonders how she managed to actually get anything cooked on her weak little stove that can barely heat up butter. The coffee is good, though. It's hard to mess up coffee.  
  
"I've had one-night stands before," Grace admits, finishing up her own eggs and washing the dishes off in the sink. She's even staying to wash dishes. "I usually get up early for this exact purpose."  
  
She doesn't believe that for a second. More likely Grace is just an early riser. Azura rolls her eyes and grabs her hairbrush, combing through her long hair. Her regular bedhead is bad enough— when she has someone upstairs, somehow it's even worse. She sighs as she combs through it, letting it fall down her back in sheets of powder-blue.  
  
"Wow," she hears the Sergeant mumble. "You really are beautiful."  
  
Somehow hearing that when she was only half-ready to catch a tram up to Castle Shirasagi, her hair still mussed from the previous night, blouse half-buttoned and untucked, and not when she was just off-duty from her singing job in the beautiful flowing dress and heels that made her sway her hips in a way that was a mesmerizing pendulum to unsuspecting men, makes her face flush. She turns her head and goes back to braiding her hair, again, in the usual style she wears it in. There is no use in going out dressed to the nines if she's only going up to the castle.  
  
She well and truly does not know how to handle that. "W-well," she begins. "Alright." Grace chuckles and Azura's face flushes further. See, now she's just making a fool of herself. Way to go, Azura.  
  
Azura buttons up her blouse instead of responding further and digging herself further into the hole. She laces up her shoes and ties them, and takes her coat from the rack. Grace's emerald-green military cap is on one of the pegs, on top of her jacket. A green luggage bag that also must be hers is next to the side table with the mirror and Azura's makeup bag— when did that get there? It's like Grace been here all along, and Azura was just passing time until she came back. But, she thinks, that's ridiculous.  
  
"I'm leaving," she says, grabbing her hat and fixing it to her hair with a pair of bobby pins from the table under the mirror. "You're welcome to stay and finish up breakfast, but you ought to be gone before the club opens at one. And really, it's best if you forget about last night."  
  
"Are you saying I should just forget _you_ ever happened?" Grace frowns, taking a sip from her coffee. She sets the mug down on the table and goes to the door, as if to see Azura off. It'd reek of corny domesticity that Azura has long since decided she'll never see were it not for the subject material of their conversation.  
  
"Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying," Azura says, taking her purse. It's illegal, but there's another knife in there, just in case. Not that it would help her much if somebody comes at her with a firearm, of course. Still, Azura likes to be prepared. "You're going to leave here, catch a taxi to Windmire, and forget I ever existed."  
  
The Sergeant doesn't like that, but before she can protest, Azura's out the door and halfway down the stairs. At least the eggs were good.

* * *

  
  
But she does see the Sergeant again. It's the winter of 1939 and the barrier is down, and Mrs. Shirasagi's twins, who have been living in Nohr for the past thirty years, have been trying to end the war by making both sides see the machinations going on behind the scenes. They're based out of a business complex in Cheve and at this point most of the ruling siblings have joined. Supposedly Azura is an equal with the Shirasagis now, instead of a hostage or an asset, but as much as they try to tell her this she's not going to treat them as equals. The late Mikoto Shirasagi may have treated her as she would her own children but Azura knows they are not family. Azura's family is dead and it would be childish of her to think otherwise. She knows better.  
  
Apparently the twins were expecting the Sergeant, which would be news to Azura, because Sergeant Grace strolls into the front lobby with steel on her back and heat at her belt, followed by snow flurries from the winter outside. She's out of uniform and in a gray pantsuit that flatters every angle she has, folds sharp as her cheekbones and crisp as her military-perfect posture, and the thick red muffler and gray overcoat do nothing to disguise this. Her hair's grown out in the past seven years but she's kept it short, no longer quite a military buzzcut but a fashionable women's cut that embraces the way it sticks out at the sides and somehow still looks flawless when she takes off her gray fedora upon entering the lobby. Azura has the sudden realization that she underestimated her attractiveness those years ago, because she's never seen someone (even Mr. Shirasagi, who modeled part-time before the war broke out) manage to pull off a trenchcoat like it's the latest fashion straight from Valm. Those fatigues did not do her justice. How old is she now? Older than Azura and Azura is thirty.  
  
Azura pretends not to notice, though. It's not proper to stare, even if she does clean up nicely. She continues with her paperwork and very purposefully does not look at the woman she had sex with seven years ago. The Sergeant has probably forgotten about that anyway.  
  
 "Good evening," the Sergeant says, strolling up to the desk. "I'm here to see an Ash Wyrmsbane— or a Silver Wyrmsbane? Or both? The card they gave wasn't clear." The way she frowns gives away that she doesn't think Ash and Silver are real names. Azura knows they are, because she was there when the twins picked them.  
  
Azura stacks her paperwork. "Of course. Ms. Wyrmsbane should be in her office. Tenth floor."  
  
"Thank you," Sergeant Grace replies. She hesitates. "Ah, forgive me for asking, but— were you a club singer, about seven years ago? Azura, right?"  
  
And the truth is yes, but Azura doesn't look up. She pulls out her rubber stamp and starts stamping dates on the top-right corners of the papers. "Who's asking?"  
  
"Ah, Grace," the Sergeant says. "Lucina Grace, former Sergeant of the Ylissean army. Infantry division A3. Past tense, anyway."  
  
"Didn't think you'd remember, soldier," Azura admits. "Not many I take upstairs remember the whore that left them in the morning."  
  
Sergeant Grace shrugs. "I wasn't sure. I think it's the eyes. You don't often see that color."  
  
The whole concept of being memorable at all is foreign to Azura. She's always been fairly certain she's no more permanent than rain on a windowsill, than water in a drain. There one minute and lovely, sure, and perhaps admired for the aesthetic, but then gone and never given another thought. Passive. Impermanent. Forgettable. Something as small as being remembered for the color of her eyes feels strange.  
  
"Did the twins tell you to look for the receptionist with yellow eyes, or something?" She's not really the receptionist, but somehow she's ended up in that job. She's also the one who posts chore charts, schedules meetings, signs for deliveries, and files paperwork. Better a secretary than a whore, she supposes.  
  
 "No, no," Grace insists. "I just— it's not every day, is all. Usually when I run into people I have one-night stands with, I never see them again. By the way, did you like the eggs?"  
  
Azura can't believe what she's hearing. She finally looks up in complete and utter disbelief. "The eggs?"  
  
"I made eggs, that morning after," Grace says. She ducks her head, a little embarrassed. "I mean… it was a long time ago. I don't blame you if you don't remember."  
  
They were delicious. Azura doesn't say that.  
  
"I remember," she says. "I just didn't think anybody else would." The word she leaves off is _care_. It's passive enough that it's harmless— but so is she. Like a twig over a waterfall, slipping downstream and out of sight, out of mind. It's better for everyone that she is not a permanent fixture— even to the rest of the company she's just there one minute and gone the next like raindrops down a storm drain, quiet and subtle and never really worth seeing more than once. Who gives a thought to the constant dripping of drops in a bucket, or the seawater that soaks into the sand on a beach? Out of sight, out of mind.  
  
Sergeant Grace chuckles. "I suppose we're a bit alike in that way, ma'am." She leans with one arm on Azura's counter, her voice dropping to a husky register somehow charged with something— it makes heat rise in Azura's cheeks. That can't be accidental. Sergeant Grace simply _can't_ be so dense she fails to notice how she sounds. The indignant frustration that Azura feels for how effortlessly charming the Sergeant manages to be in combination with something that she can vaguely label as attraction leftover from that one-night stand seven years ago is potent enough that Azura's first instinct is to grab the Sergeant by those _stupid_ _pretty_ _cheeks_ and kiss her until they both forget their names.  
  
But it's years of meaningless flirting that's prepared Azura with a rebuttal. " _Are_ we, now?" she purrs, tilting her head. She leans her chin on the soft palm of her hand, fingers curled just so. She's painted her nails with a shade of sapphire-blue the twins picked up for her awhile back. It's completely frivolous and she loves it. Sort of like how flirting with an old flame is completely frivolous, but she's doing it anyway.  
  
 "I actually think we have many similarities," the Sergeant says. "So what do you say to comparing them, say, over dinner? And if it goes well, maybe a round of drinks at my place?"  
  
Azura's immediate response is to deny— she's been invited out for dinner, or even just over to someone else's place, countless times before, and always said no because she was still on the clock, and if they persisted she'd call over the bouncer and that usually scared them off. But this time is different— she's not a jazz club canary anymore, and really, the receptionist thing isn't even a job. She could very well agree to dinner with the Sergeant, have drinks, and have another one-night stand and awkward morning. What harm would it do? It'd be easy. It was always easy. Just scratching an itch that needed it, taking care of it before it distracted her from what was really important. It wasn't like the Sergeant really cared, was it? Who _ever_ did?  
  
Free food. Free drinks. Another night. Another morning. It could be worse, really, now that she thought of it. The question was _why_ is something in her chest fluttering at the thought— _why_ is she suddenly hesitating over the prospect? It doesn't matter to her mind, but _why_ does it suddenly matter to her body— no, why does it suddenly matter to her _heart_?  
  
She takes the leap. "I _suppose_ I can squeeze you in," Azura shrugs. "I'll let the Wyrmsbanes know. Pick me up at eight?"  
  
"I can do that," the Sergeant replies, almost bewildered that it worked. She grins and suddenly looks fifteen years younger, like an awkward teenager asking out the cutie in their chemistry class. Azura jots down the address of where she's staying on a spare page in a legal pad and hands it to Sergeant Grace, who folds it and tucks it in her chest pocket.  
  
"You can call me Azura," Azura tells her. "The ma'am isn't necessary."  
  
"Azura," the Sergeant repeats. She can't quite place the accent (Plegian? Valmese?) with which she says it but it almost sends a tingle up Azura's spine. Why, she supposes she'll never know. "I'll remember that."  
  
_You did for seven years,_ Azura wants to say, and doesn't. "I look forward to this evening, Sergeant," she says instead.  
  
And then Sergeant Grace has to leave for her meeting with the twins and Azura returns to her filing, until business hours end at five and the twins close up the front doors. They tell Azura goodnight when she leaves for the boardinghouse where she's staying, and she nods respectfully. She walks the six blocks south it takes for her to reach the place, ignores the raucous noise coming from the other tenants in the living room before dinner, changes, washes off her makeup, hangs her dress on the hook outside the closet, and waits with a book for evening to come. It's not a real disruption to her routine, but she'll admit it's nice to have something to look forward to.  
  
When eight comes, she's just putting the finishing touches on her makeup and pinning her hat into place— because no respectable woman (or even respectable whore) goes out without either. She answers the door before the landlady can get it— and she has to actually take a moment to remember to breathe because the creature on the porch is beyond the mild-to-moderate handsome that she was in the afternoon, this— this is stunning.  
  
Maybe it's the fading sunlight, or the gas lamps lining the Chevois streets, lighting her up in orange and yellow from behind. Maybe it's the violet shadows falling across her face, shadowing her cheekbones and contouring her features in a way that is far too perfect to be real. It's the same suit as the evening but maybe it's the little blue flower tucked in the top pocket of her overcoat, or the shine of her wingtip shoes, the little glittering cufflinks Azura can see peeking from beneath her overcoat and her suit coat. Maybe it's the choice of a little blue bowtie over a necktie, or the way she's swept her hair under the brim of her fedora, or a thousand other tiny little things Azura didn't notice when the sun was up that she can see now that it's gotten dark. Maybe it's the grin that is simultaneously humble and wolfish that now sends a tingle up Azura's spine. Azura knows, theoretically, what attraction feels like, but until now she has to admit she's thought of it as a myth.  
  
"Wow," Azura breathes. "Ah— good evening, sergeant. You certainly clean up nicely."  
  
The sergeant chuckles humbly, adjusting her coat. It's obviously tailored by an expert. The blue waistcoat hugs the firm curve of her breast, flattering what little there is without drawing the eye to it. Azura is somewhat envious— she gets her daywear ready-made, and the one tailored gown she does have will likely never see life outside her trunk. It was made for a younger woman, a younger Azura, in her prime at nineteen and charming all who cross the threshold of the Samurai Sunrise with her voice and her body, hypnotizing in her movements and crooning in her voice. But tailors are for the rich, or for people on good terms with a tailor. The Sergeant is more than likely both.  
  
"I could say the same for you," she replies. Azura snaps herself out of her thoughts. Now is not the time to be distracted by her date's suit. The Sergeant is probably being nice, but Azura will accept the compliment anyway because that's the path of least resistance.  
  
"I try, thank you," Azura says. The exact dress she's wearing was in every single dinner restaurant on every type of woman three years ago. But what can she say? Royal blue is her color.  
  
Sergeant Grace offers her arm. "Shall we?" she says. Azura takes it, and off they go.  
  
The restaurant is in walking distance, Grace says, which is great because she doesn't have a car they can use. It's Chevois cuisine, moderately-priced, and the appetizer course goes about as Azura expected. She listens to Grace talk about her friends in the Wyrmsbane conglomerate, who seem to only go by surnames that sound almost false but real enough to be believable— Wolfe, Justice, and Dark. What kind of names are those? But Azura knows who she's talking about so she doesn't bother asking. They were in A3 together, and the Shepherds' famously lax rules meant they all got to become good friends, and kept in touch. She has stories about all of them, though Azura notes how she avoids giving many very personal details, like their first names. Azura can respect that, even if she already knows their first names because she's the one who does all the paperwork.  
  
But around the time the waiters bring out the main course, something has changed. Perhaps Azura has caught on to the sparkle in Sergeant Grace's eyes when she talks about her friends, the animated way she moves her hands, the way this little lilting accent (definitely Plegian) creeps into her voice when she gets into the story, that's convinced Azura to let her guard down. She finds herself leaning forward to listen not because she wants to convey she's interested, but because she actually is. She laughs at the stories not because she's planning to seduce the Sergeant later but because they're funny and Grace is funny, and it makes her heart feel a little lighter to honestly laugh for once. So she opens up as well— she tells little anecdotes she's noticed about the twins and their inner circle, about people she's come across before. And Sergeant Grace listens and asks questions and Azura feels, heard, seen, acknowledged. It's a good feeling. She's not used to it.  
  
They're half-finished with the main course and discussing ordering a cheesecake for them to split when Azura notices the candlelight glancing off Grace's arched nose, the idle smile on her face as she looks over the menu, the soft curve of her lips and the slight blush on her cheeks and her long eyelashes and the pure, piercing blue of both her eyes, both the darker one the color of the sky when the sun has just begun to set and the lighter one so pale it reminds Azura of blue correction fluid. (The dark blue eye must be false; last Azura saw her, perhaps her two eyes were slightly different shades, but it was not that dark.) But the hunger in Azura's chest is not physical, not some pang to be sated with big hands on her waist and hard, bruising kisses on her lips and purplish bite marks on her skin, and a stranger in her bed that she will leave and never see again. The feeling is softer, fluttering like the flames in the candles on the table, and it is fingers intertwined and swung idly while walking, kisses to cheeks and lips that are thoughtless and idle and shallow and do not ask to be followed by anything but more quiet, limbs tangled beneath shared bedsheets in a manner that is intimate but not sexual and it's something Azura craved long ago when she first started taking unsuspecting men up to her room but that she shoved down convincing herself that it was the same thing as easy seduction. It makes her heart ache like it's been aching this whole time but she just couldn't tell what it was. Suddenly she's fifteen again and she's curled in on herself on the narrow little bed in her cold apartment because the idea of singing for people that will stare and consume and then be on their way makes her feel sick and shaky and alone. It's an ache that she can recognize after the meaningless nights that she shoves down and fills with new song lyrics (words she'll sing that will not have any meaning to them, just pretend emotion like she's adopted for all the time). Azura has never thought about the two being different before but now she is and she wonders how she didn't notice.  
  
She misses when she was on the Sergeant's arm like they were a couple going to a show, and suddenly where they were touching feels cold. Azura shifts and hopes she doesn't let on to this. Is it possible to miss somebody that you're both still with and that you will never have?  
  
The cheesecake arrives, drizzled with strawberry syrup. Azura takes a bite and the word love floats into her mind on little feathery wings. She suddenly feels very ill.  
  
But she manages not to make a complete fool of herself through dinner, and once they pay the bill and leave again, the sun has set completely and it's started to snow. There are little flurries falling through the air. Sergeant Grace catches one on her tongue before they start to walk. She has an arm tucked around Azura as if making sure she won't blow away in the wind, and the tweed of her overcoat tickles Azura's cheek. Azura presses her ear to the Grace's chest and can hear her heartbeat through the layers of fabric. She's much shorter than Grace so she can just rest her head there and it's fine, and then Grace reaches for Azura's hand to hold. She brings it up to her lips and kisses warmth into it, and Azura feels heat rise to her cheeks. Of all the women she's flirted with, this is the absolute gayest thing she's ever been a part of. This is it. It cannot _possibly_ get any gayer than this. Azura feels her heart race.

  
  
They walk down the Chevois streets and Azura pretends she doesn't see Mr. Shirasagi pass them on a date of his own, hand-in-hand with a small, freckly blonde in a crimson pantsuit and flowing fur-trimmed and rhinestone-studded coat, both flush-drunk and laughing at something or other. He looks happy, and for that Azura is glad. He's far too serious.  
  
They don't go directly to Grace's place for drinks— they end up taking a detour to that bridge the Sergeant heard is a romantic spot, and then they walk through one of Cheve's many, many parks, and try to skate on a frozen pond in their shoes. Azura is fine because she's a dancer but Grace stumbles over herself and nearly breaks her nose tripping into a tree, and they decide through their laughter that that's enough skating for one day. There are still flurries falling. It'll be another cold winter day tomorrow.  
  
It's when they're finally on their way to where Sergeant Grace is staying because it's gotten too cold to be out any longer that Azura realizes she's humming— an old waltz from an age long past that she doesn't even remember learning. Somehow it feels apropros for the winter— snow flurries falling, cheek brushing the wool of her date's overcoat, walking liesurely back towards home for drinks. She's blushing but it's not a bad thing. They're close, with Grace's arm holding Azura close to her side, and with how much taller she is it makes Azura feel small. But not a bad small, not an insignificant small. Just small.  
  
 Sergeant Grace, at least her friends, live in a little brick townhouse, one of twenty on the block, with tar roofs and shared walls and a little slice of front yard and bicycles chained to the front rail, and a basement entrance six steps down from the front. Her cold hands fumble with her housekey but she pauses in front of the basement door, as if she thought of something.  
  
"You don't have to call me Sergeant," she says to Azura. "Just Lucina is fine."  
  
Azura hadn't thought of that. "Are you sure?"  
  
"Absolutely," the Sergeant replies. "I'm not really a Sergeant anymore, either. I've been honorably discharged. Injury."  
  
Now _that_ she hadn't known. "Are you alright?"  
  
The Sergeant taps beside one of her eyes— the dark blue one. "I am now. This one is glass. I lost it in '33. But apparently I can't be a sergeant with only one eye, so I'm looking for other employment opportunities."  
  
"You're royalty, it shouldn't be hard," Azura shrugs. "Right?"

  "Harder than it may seem," Lucina admits. "I'm not the heir, so 'prince' isn't really a job. But I suppose I'll see where life takes me." She unlocks the door and holds it open for Azura.  
  
There's a pool table in the basement, at the base of the stairs, and there's a redheaded woman practicing her trick shots at it. She's scowling around the cigarette in her mouth, tie undone and dangling around her neck. There are two men playing cards at a little table, though what game they're playing, Azura can't tell. Azura removes her coat and hat, though she doesn't know where to put them, so she holds on to them.  
  
The woman is Justice, Azura knows, because she knows all of them. Justice doesn't even look when Azura walks in, followed closely by Lucina, who shuts the door against the elements and hangs her overcoat, scarf, and hat on the crowded coatrack. Lucina takes Azura's coat and hat and drapes them over the mass.

"About time you got back," Justice says around her cigarette. Most of the smoke in the room appears to be from her. "Sparky was getting worried."  
  
"No, I wasn't," one of the men at the card table shouts— Dark, Azura is pretty sure. The one that has no concept of an inside voice and has named every gun in the arsenal.  
  
"Yeah you were," Justice replies. Dark grumbles and returns to his game. Wolfe snickers, putting down three of his cards.  
  
"Don't mind them," Lucina says to Azura. "The drinks are upstairs, anyway."  
  
"Good luck, sir," Wolfe calls as Lucina takes Azura upstairs. "Say, do your best not to scare your date off— I've got a tenner riding on this."  
  
"What have I told you people about taking bets on how my dates go?" Lucina sighs. She shakes her head. "Buncha goons. But they're _my_ goons, so."  
  
_It must be nice to have friends_ is what Azura thinks then, but she doesn't say it. The twins would claim she's their friend, but she doesn't really believe it. Maybe it's because she has a hard time believing that anybody actually thinks about her.  
  
Lucina takes the wine from one of the cabinets. It's a cheap bootleg and the bottle says _1920_ , but Azura doesn't really care. She's small so it doesn't take much to get her drunk— if that's even the point of this. She's past caring, really. She just has to remember to keep herself under control. She's not sure where this night is going, but it strikes her as odd that she hasn't just gone back to the boarding house. She supposes she could, but at this point that'd be more effort than it's worth. This way she'll at least get somewhere warmer to sleep for the night, and maybe breakfast in the morning, which is more than she can say if she went back to her place.  
  
She pours two glasses and hands one to Azura. Azura swirls the blood-red liquid before unceremoniously taking a sip. The Krakeners may know about the proper way to drink wine, but Azura knows it's just fancy juice for rich people that can get you drunk. She chugs the rest of it on impulse. Who cares, she's not going home tonight anyway.  
  
Lucina goes more slowly. She leans against the kitchen counter, ducking under the handles for the top cabinets. Azura wonders what it's like to be that tall. They don't speak. It's dark, but it's kind of nice.  
  
"What song was that?" Lucina asks. Azura, halfway through her second glass of wine, frowns.  
  
"What song?" she replies.  
  
"That one you hummed, when we were walking back from the park," Lucina clarifies. "You were humming."  
  
"Oh, I was." Azura flushes. "I don't do that often. It's _Life in the Finn Woods_. My, ah, mother used to play it for me, and the melody stuck."  
  
Lucina hums. "I haven't heard of that one," she admits. "You know, that's the first thing you've really told me about yourself since I met you."  
  
Was it really? "I'm sure you know more about me than that," Azura replies, if only to throw off suspicion.  
  
"I know you're the type who's mastered making people think they know you when they really know very little," Lucina says, finishing off her glass of wine. "My aunt is the same way. You could talk to her all day and have spilled half your life story, but you wouldn't know anything about her but her name and her favorite kind of tea. My father says she's always been guarded. Now that I'm older, I've noticed that I know a lot of people like that."  
  
Lucina pours herself another glass. Some of it sloshes over onto her fingers. She wipes them on a nearby tea towel. Azura isn't sure what to say to that, so she says nothing. She takes a sip of her wine.  
  
"I digress," Lucina shrugs. "It's a lovely song. I suppose you'd know many."  
  
Azura nods. "Though I'll admit I'm not up to snuff with what's on the charts now, since I've left the music scene. There's plenty of excitement with the Wyrmsbanes."  
  
"They certainly seem energetic," Lucina chuckles. "I met Silver at the train station when I asked him what train to take for the airport. One thing led to another and the next thing I knew, I'd agreed to be a Ylissean representative in the Wyrmsbane's cause. I still haven't told my family of this. My father thinks I've been studying with my friends for the past seven years. I really should call him." She adds the last sentence like it's an afterthought, as if she's forgotten to call her father for the past seven years. Azura has a fleeting thought that she hasn't called her mother in years, either, but then remembers that her mother is dead.  
  
"They're like that," Azura admits. "I don't understand them sometimes, but I respect what they're doing. They've given me a job that doesn't involve standing in front of people for hours on end in a smoky club, and has the vague sense of working for a good cause. I try to guide them where I can."  
  
Lucina nods. "Well, I'd say you're doing a pretty great job," she says. "My friends, the ones downstairs— they're on board with the cause. They think it's a great thing. And from what I've seen, I'm looking forward to being a part of it, and to working with you."  
  
"I'm just in charge of paperwork," Azura says humbly. "You'll be in the meeting rooms, as a representative."  
  
"Still," Lucina replies. "I expect we'll see each other at company picnics and potlucks." She chuckles, like she's just made an amusing joke. And it is amusing, so Azura allows a little laugh to escape. It's supposed to be funny, even if it's not, really, given the general mood. But, Azura thinks, it's not a bad mood. It's companionable. She's sitting in Lucina's kitchen in her eveningwear in the middle of the night, with a cheap bottle of wine and a comfortable silence settled like heavy fog on her chest. She idly plays with the glass, set down on the cluttered breakfast table, and Lucina offers her more wine. She shouldn't. She nods.  
  
It's not so bad, really, she thinks. And now the soft thoughts are coming again— quiet touches, stillness in the mornings, feeling warm where her skin touches Lucina's and cool where it does not. Lucina lit up in dawn sunlight, barefoot on the cool floor, hair tousled. Her hands are strong but they're soft when she brushes Azura's hair out of her face. Soft, soft with her lips when they embrace, when her hand is on Azura's back. It's all gentle and in pastel shades, and to an Azura used to heart-beat reds and purples blooming in darkness and twisted sheets, hot breaths, thinking this does not make me happy but doing it anyway, it is new and scary. When Lucina reaches out to tuck a loose, long strand of powder-blue behind her ear, she pushes the hand away.  
  
Lucina withdraws her hand. Azura drains her wineglass again. She starts her fourth and she's starting to feel sick. Is it the wine, or is it the soft thoughts? She can't be sure.  
  
Lucina has sat next to her. Her cheeks are flushed but she's fairly sober— clearly Lucina is no stranger to liquor. She reaches out again and Azura thinks she's going to reach for her hand, and Azura would be alright with that beacause maybe that'll help her make sense of the softness, but Lucina's calloused hand takes the bottle of wine instead. She pours another glass. Azura has the fleeting urge to down her fourth glass but she doesn't.  
  
"We ought to go dancing sometime," Lucina thinks aloud. "I'm afraid I don't know of any, but Wolfe probably does. He likes that sort of thing."  
  
Azura hums. "Planning our second date when I haven't even said yes yet?"  
  
It's meant to be mildly funny, and Lucina laughs. But she laughs more than Azura expected, and smiles at Azura when she stops. Her blue eyes are shining. It's the most beautiful thing Azura has ever seen.  
  
"Yet," Lucina repeats. "You said yet."  
  
Azura thinks that it's then when she stands and puts her arms around Lucina's neck, when she sits herself on Lucina's lap because that's the only available space, when their lips meet and it tastes like bootleg wine from 1920. It's soft until Azura makes it harder, presses purposefully to try and drown out the softness. But it's also hazy and drunken and Azura regrets those four glasses of wine already. Lucina's arms are around her and something in Azura says _stop, hold it there. Just let her hold you. That's what you wanted all this time. You don't even like sex._ Azura tells it to shut up.  
  
"So, maybe next Friday?" Lucina murmurs. "Since all the clubs are closed on Sundays."  
  
"Maybe," Azura hums. She lets her eyes close and sets her head on Lucina's shoulder. The silk of her suit is soft beneath her cheek. She can feel Lucina's pulse when she sets her lips on her skin. "I wouldn't say no to dinner, either."  
  
"It's a date," Lucina decides. Azura can feel her smile even though her eyes are shut, and her face is tucked beneath Lucina's chin. Something in Azura's chest flutters. She's not used to that.  
  
They kiss again. But it doesn't feel building, it doesn't feel like they're going to be tugging at each other's clothes— when Azura's hand moves to trace Lucina's chest, Lucina catches it.  
 "It's gotten late," she says. "I'll walk you home."  
  
"It's too far to walk," Azura says. Her mouth feels dry.  
  
"Then I'll borrow the car," Lucina shrugs. "I'd rather see you home safe."  
  
 It's on the tip of Azura's tongue to just ask if she can stay here for the night. She licks her lips, trying to figure out how to parse it, but she's drunk and the words won't come and she really, really doesn't want to go. There's nobody at the boarding house worried if she gets home, and she doesn't care who will talk if she stays overnight. Who _cares_ if it's indecent? Azura's been a whore since her teenage years and she's certain that just because she's thirty and has a desk job the rumors haven't stopped— untrue though they may be. She can, in fact, count on one hand the number of encounters she's had in the five-so years she's worked for the twins.  
  
Lucina hesitates. "Unless—" she begins. She second-guesses herself. Then she continues. "You could stay here for the night, if— if you want to. I don't think my friends would mind. I'll take the couch."  
  
"You're such a gentleman," Azura teases. She's slurring her words but Lucina can still pick out individual words.  
  
"I try," Lucina chuckles. They kiss again and it's Lucina who initiates it, so it's soft and velvety and Azura wants to melt into it. She lingers when Lucina pulls back.  
  
They move to the guest room. There's a suitcase on the armchair in the corner, already opened, and half the clothes in it are hanging over the sides and crumpled on the floor as if hastily tossed aside looking for something. The bed is half-made but looks like it hasn't been slept in very much, and there's a stack of boxes in the closet that the house's permanent occupants likely couldn't be bothered to actually put away.  
  
While Lucina looks through her suitcase, Azura stops in the bathroom across the hall from the guest room and fumbles with her hair. She pins it up, as is socially proper, but there are so many pins and so much hair her hands don't know what to do. She scrubs the makeup off her face instead, and the cold water helps the haze fade, just a little. The world is still moving under her feet. She really shouldn't have had that much wine. She'll have a headache in the morning but she'll be fine once she eats. For now she just wants to collapse and forget.  
 Lucina brings her a nightgown that clearly isn't hers, because it's light green and made of floral-printed cotton and has lace at the bodice, and Azura would've guessed Lucina is more the blue flannel type. It must belong to Justice. Azura hopes that Justice knows Lucina's borrowing her nightgown, because if somebody borrowed Azura's nightgown without asking, she'd be rather annoyed.  
  
Lucina, who is either less drunk or just better at functioning while equally drunk, helps her remove the small army of pins from Azura's head. Then she helps with the zipper on Azura's dress that Azura's fingers can't manage to grasp, and helps when her hair gets caught in it. Azura can handle the rest.  
  
With Lucina in the other room, Azura stares herself in the mirror. _Don't ruin this,_ she tells herself. The Azura in the mirror, with wine-flushed cheeks and sweat on her brow and dark circles beneath her eyes normally hidden behind makeup and chapped lips normally hidden under lipstick, cannot promise anything.  
  
She takes her clothes in a bundle in her arms and sets it on the chest of drawers in the guest room, shutting the door behind her. Lucina is sitting on the opposite side of the bed in her undershirt and pajama pants. She's pulled the covers back but she doesn't seem like she's going to get under them.  
  
She stands. The mattress springs creak.  
  
"Don't go," Azura says before she can think about it. She wants to stuff the words back into her mouth. She stands there, knees frozen, feeling too vulnerable for her level of comfort. She feels small and out of place and uncertain, like she's standing in the ocean with the waves crashing into her knees, trying their damndest to knock her down, and there's someone holding out a hand for her but she can't let herself open up like that, she _can't_ , it'll just go wrong. She's thirteen again and Hoshido is new to her, and everyone speaks too quickly and all she wants is to be back home in Valla, with its clean air and its big ocean and its jungles and rivers and peaks. But she has not been in Valla since she was five and for all she knows, everything she once loved has been destroyed.  
  
She swallows. She wants to forget she said that. Another ten glasses of wine will do the trick but Lucina's put the wine away.  
  
Lucina is caught off-guard, but she shrugs. "Alright."  
  
And it's nice when Azura is in Lucina's arms again, when the bedcovers are heavy over her legs and Lucina is sitting next to her. Azura's arms are around her waist. It's nice but Azura wants more contact, more touch. Her skin burns where Lucina is and it burns more where she is not. There's an ache in her chest to get closer, closer, to melt into the touch and never re-form. Perhaps that ache is what makes one human— aching to shed physical form and become a being of pure emotion. Perhaps that is what humans were always meant to be, or perhaps she's just touch-starved and tipsy. Either way, she wants.  
  
It's quiet. She hears church bells strike twelve times. Somebody shoots off fireworks in a day-early anticipation for the new year. There are police sirens somewhere, unrelated to the fireworks.  
  
"In Ylisse," Lucina says. "The new year begins in the spring."  
  
"Why?" Azura asks. "January first is what the calendar says."  
  
"It is, and we acknowledge it," Lucina agrees. "But the real new year is in the spring. In Ylisstol it's when the ice on the lake gets thin. People dare each other to go out onto the thinnest parts until it breaks. My friends and did that when we were teenagers. Brady nearly froze to death one year— we got an earful from his mother, but," she shrugs. "Kids are stupid sometimes. We did it again, of course. But the next year we brought a stronger rope."  
  
"That's so reckless," Azura comments.  
  
Lucina chuckles. "Yeah, it is. But I think the new year should be in spring instead of the dead of winter. Then you can celebrate rebirth and new beginnings when the world itself is doing the same— or something." She flushes. "It's just a day, though. It doesn't really matter."  
  
That makes sense. Azura can relate— what _does_ matter, in the end? She doesn't respond.  
  
Lucina plays with her hair. She pulls out a stray pin and sets it aside. There are more than likely still more pins buried in there somewhere— Azura has a lot of hair, and nobody taught her how to pin it up efficiently or ever did it for her, so she had to teach herself. She's considered cutting it, but she's had short hair before, and it wasn't a good look for her.  
  
"Happy new year's eve," Azura mumbles. "I know it's early, but I'm glad I could spend part of it with you." She almost regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth. That's the gayest thing she's ever said, right there. Lucina strokes her hair gently and doesn't respond. Azura can only pray she'll forget those words when she wakes. (Her luck being what it is, she will not.)  
  
Lucina laughs. It's not the low chuckle that Azura has heard before, that ripples across her jawline and sends tingles down her spine. It's light and almost girlish, and it reminds her of budding flowers breaking through topsoil and of fireflies blinking into existence on a hot summer night. It makes something in Azura feel like it's warming, like sunshine on limbs that have forgotten what sunshine is like, and that word floats through her head again, love, and she allows it to linger like Lucina's fingers brushing across her scalp.  
  
It's a nice word, love. She thinks it with the beat of her foolish heart, with when Lucina's hand alights itself softly on her scalp and fingers comb through long hair that will be a tangled mess in the morning, no doubt. Love. Like holding hands. Like dancing on the ice in the park, like humming Life in the Finn Woods, like wine in the kitchen late at night. Like Lucina's arm around her back, holding her by the waist— like tucking Azura close to her chest as if to make sure she won't blow away in the winter wind, holding her hand and kissing warmth into it and along the way making warmth creep into her heart as well. Love. It seemed silly in the restaurant but here Azura feels safe, feels warm, even if it's just the wine talking, and now it seems like it could be happening. It feels like a fairy tale, like a song her mother would sing to her at night before her father died and they moved to Nohr and everything turned to smoke and concrete where once were jungles.  
  
"I'm told there will be a party at the Wyrmsbane building tonight, to herald the new year," Lucina says. "Will you be there?"  
  
She says it hopefully. Azura shrugs. "I don't know. Ask me when I'm sober."  
  
It's a fair answer. A non-answer. Lucina seems disappointed, as if she knows Azura won't be quite the same when she's sober. Like she'll have pulled hard on the reins holding back her emotions, and she'll say no like she almost did when Lucina invited her to dinner.  
  
It's quiet after that. Azura is halfway to slumber, her breathing sinking into an even rhythm, when she feels Lucina stand. Don't go, she thinks. But Lucina's hand removes itself from her hair, she feels cold rush over where Lucina once was, feels her head gently lifted and set onto a pillow where once was Lucina's lap, Lucina's hand is slipping through her fingers and she thinks—  
  
"Stay," she says. Lucina lingers. Azura feels a sob well up in her chest and she doesn't know why, it was just a date, she doesn't even like sex so she should be glad that Lucina is leaving without it, it didn't matter, why did she ever thought it mattered, why does it suddenly matter so much—  
  
Azura lifts her heavy head. "Stay," she chokes out. Logic is slumbering and the reins are loose. It's dark and Azura can only barely see Lucina's form. Even the distant sounds from the basement are gone and there is naught but silence in the house.  
  
"Azura—" Lucina starts. There's a little bit of an accent in her voice and Azura can hear it when the Z in her name passes Lucina's lips, and gods if it doesn't make her thrill.  
  
"Just—" Azura says. Her chin shakes. She bites her lip. "Please stay with me. Please, I— I'm sorry, I sh-shouldn't ask, but—" She bites down harder. Pain flares. The world is still spinning but in the moment the world has shrunk to her and Lucina and the cries threatening to spill from her throat.  
  
She swallows hard. "I don't want to be alone," she says, almost a whimper but not quite. She can feel her lip shaking out of her control. Her cheeks are wet. They can't have always been like that. She feels hungry and achy and tired but it's not huntry because she wants sex and it's not an ache because she's empty and it's not tired because she's half-drunk, it's hungry because somehow she's grown drunk on the feeling of Lucina's skin and the taste of Lucina's lips, it's an ache because her heart yearns for something the master of logic tells her she can't have, and it's tired because she's felt so alone for so long and she doesn't want to feel this way anymore and now she has finally, finally come across somebody who feeds that hunger and eases that ache, who takes her tiredness and says _it's alright, you can rest now._ She's drunk and she can't tell if these are the words she spills to Lucina then but she hopes it is and it's not just meaningless slurring. Her tears dot the bedspread.  
  
The bed creaks when Lucina sits down on it again and it creaks when she pulls Azura to her chest, wraps her in an embrace that Azura never wants to leave.  
  
"That's what love is," Lucina whispers. "It's love."  
  
"It's love," Azura repeats. She buries her face in Lucina's shirt and she cries, and it doesn't even matter why because it feels so, so good to finally have a real name for what she feels. And Lucina holds her until she's run dry of tears and she promises that she won't leave, she'll stay as long as Azura needs. It is then Lucina presses a kiss to her head as if trying to imbue you are enough, you are wanted, you are loved directly into Azura's brain, and she whispers the words _I love you_ but Azura does not stay awake long enough to say them back.  
  
Morning annoucnes itself with sunshine through the white curtains. They're sheer and lacier than Azura was expecting for a house owned by a trio of unattached young adults, but they are the first thing she sees when she blinks the sleep from her eyes. Her head pounds but she doesn't feel the immediate need to stumble into the bathroom and retch out the contents of her stomach, so that's good.  
  
How much of the night does she remember? Dinner. The park. _Life in the Finn Woods_. Too much wine. Borrowing Justice's nightgown. Her head on Lucina's lap. New year's. Love.  
  
Her head spins. She pushes her hair off her face and it slithers back in seconds. Whatever. Her hair is always impossible to work with before she brushes it.  
  
She shifts and the bed creaks, and in response the form next to her mumbles something unintelligible. Lucina's arms are warm but heavy around Azura's body and it's nice, but Azura really would rather move.  
  
Azura tries to wriggle away. Lucina pulls her closer. Her lips clumsily kiss their way from her neck to her jaw. "Not yet," she mumbles between kisses. "Still time."  
  
"You're half-asleep," Azura says gently. But she turns anyway. Their lips meet like it's the most natural thing in the world. Azura's hands cup Lucina's cheeks. Her hair is flattened up on one side like she put too much pomade in it and now it's stuck. But her eyelashes are long and lit up in the sunbeams reaching their way over the city skyline. She can hear the cars outside. It snowed more overnight and the sunshine is blinding, glancing off the snow-covered sidewalks. There's a police siren somewhere. There's always a siren somewhere.  
  
"True," Lucina hums, into another kiss. "Y'mean you're not? Thought those glasses of wine would get back at you in the morning."  
  
"I'm made of sterner stuff than that, Lucina Grace," Azura teases, and Lucina laughs, and Azura laughs with her, and their smiles meet in an easy, graceless kiss. Lucina wraps her arms around Azura's middle and rolls onto her back, pulling Azura and the sheets with her.  
  
"Five more minutes, then," she whispers, before kissing at Azura's neck, and they don't talk much after that.  
  
It's twenty minutes and Azura's blinking the stars from her eyes when they do speak again. They're tangled in the sheets with clothing scattered on the floor around the bed and Azura cannot recall ever making love in the morning before— never while it's light, when the sun can light up the shine of sweat on her lover's face and make her glow like she's a being knit from flower petals and sunshine herself, when sunbeams filter through the dust in the room and fall upon the curves of her body so wonderfully, so gracefully it feels like a scene ripped from a painting, or perhaps a magazine of sapphic erotica. She cannot recall laughing and gasping in the same breath, carding her fingers through her lover's hair as she comes undone beneath her lips, and collapsing on light-filled sheets when it's done and the clouds are clearing. And she cannot recall said lover leaning up and kissing her cheek with flushed, warm lips, and her whispering I love you, too.  
  
When she does Lucina flushes straight to her ears. "You do?"  
  
Azura shrugs. "Let's not make it more complicated than it needs to be," she says, which is frustratingly cryptic even for her. "Of course I do. I didn't get to say it back to you when you said it to me last night."  
  
"Oh," Lucina says. "Oh!"  
  
Azura smiles and they kiss again, and it's soft and nice and it's love, it's love, it's floating through her mind and she can no longer deny it. And Azura thinks to herself why didn't I come to grips with this before?  
  
By the time Azura finds her underwear (in a heap on the floor under Lucina's pajama pants) there's the smells of coffee and pancakes from the kitchen. Azura ties the belt of a borrowed dressing gown around her waist and pads out to the kitchen hand-in-hand with Lucina, because holding hands is easy and she feels very free around Lucina after getting that spiel about how lonely she was off her chest last night. There's jazz coming from the radio in the living room and Azura knows the song, and Wolfe is humming along to it while he stands at the kitchen with a spatula in his hand. Justice has her elbow on the living room windowsill, leaning back in her chair with a sketchbook on her lap, smoking a cigarette like she's in competition with the chimney. Dark is nowhere to be seen.  
  
Justice looks up when they pass. Lucina pours them two cups of coffee from the coffeemaker and Azura lingers in the archway between the kitchen and the living room.  
  
"You look good in my nightgown," Justice comments. "Azura, right?"  
  
Azura nods. Justice waves her over and she goes, sitting on the couch and angling her head away from the cigarette smoke. She had enough of that in the jazz club.  
  
"Can't say I was expecting Blue there to have a roll in the hay with a classy dame like you," Justice comments. "You did good, though. Blue's a catch."  
  
"I wouldn't call myself classy," Azura admits. Maybe slightly classier than your average street whore. "I was just lucky. I expect we'll say our goodbyes before the new year."  
 "Oh, yeah?" Justice raises an eyebrow. She blows cigarette smoke out the window. "Don't be so sure."  
  
Azura frowns. "Why shouldn't I be sure? I've done this before. Not the— the staying for breakfast thing, but the one-night stand thing. Do you think this will, what, re-ignite our flame of passion lost when we parted ways seven years ago?"  
  
"I'm sensing a hint of bitterness," Justice says, pursing her lips. "Don't blame you, though. I've had my fair share of encounters. But Blue isn't like that. She doesn't bring people home often, but when she does— _boy_." Justice takes the nearly-done cigarette out of her mouth and crushes it in the ashtray. "She'll fight for them to stay. Sometimes they don't want to. Sometimes they can't. But she won't just let them go."  
  
Something about that sticks in Azura's head, bounces around. Won't just let them go, won't just let them go, won't just let them go— like an echo that refuses to fade.  
  
Dark announces his arrival with the morning mail and paper. He tosses Justice a few fashion magazines and slaps the rest on the kitchen table, greets Azura with a hearty good morning, and then goes into the kitchen and slugs Lucina in the shoulder like she's just completed an incredible task by bringing Azura home for the night. Lucina grins, a little sheepishly, and leaves him to talk to Wolfe in the kitchen. Lucina holds on to one mug and sets the other on the coffee table. Justice picks up the mug and puts a coaster under it.  
  
"I hope you like thick pancakes," Lucina says, settling an arm over Azura's shoulders. "Inigo makes them fluffy— thicker than the pan they're in."  
  
"It sounds and smells delicious," Azura promises. Inigo, though? She hasn't heard that name— the name on Wolfe's papers is Wolfe, Laslow B. Perhaps this is one of the things she ought not question.  
  
Lucina chuckles. "Good," she says. She kisses Azura's cheek. "So, you never actually answered me— are you going to the new year's party tonight?"  
  
I'd go anywhere with you, Azura thinks. She doesn't say that. Instead she smiles and leans her head up, kissing Lucina's jaw. "I suppose I can fit it into my schedule," she admits. "And if you want to go dancing next weekend, I won't say no to that, either."  
  
Lucina's face lights up, the real eye and glass eye both.  
  
"And the eggs you made," Azura adds without thinking. "They were delicious."


End file.
